


we put your curse in reverse

by serendipitee



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bands, Anxiety, Face-Fucking, First Dates, Kink Negotiation, M/M, New York City, Nipple Play, Recovery, References to Depression, Smoking, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:15:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitee/pseuds/serendipitee
Summary: Jaebeom blinks and waits, rubbing his thumb just inside his pocket against the nearly-crushed pack of American Spirits he shoved in there on his way out the door. In the time it takes for him to tap his toes and to consider pulling one out and smoking it, he can hear someone thundering down the stairs inside and —“Oh, hey,” Bambam says, leaning in the doorway with a casual pose, pretending not to struggle catching his breath. He puffs a little out of his bottom lip, shifting his newly honey brown bangs off his forehead.Or:In the muggy heat of a New York summer, Jaebeom goes on his first official date.
Relationships: Kunpimook Bhuwakul | BamBam/Im Jaebum | JB
Comments: 15
Kudos: 47





	we put your curse in reverse

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Your Heart Was a Legend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23331793) by [oceans4jinyoung](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceans4jinyoung/pseuds/oceans4jinyoung). 



> Wholly inspired by Morgan's entire [The Habits You Forgot to Outgrow](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1674832) series, which captured my imagination, burrowed into my brain and made me cry approximately one bajillion times. I can only hope I did your wonderful Jaebeom justice!!
> 
> Playlist for this work [here!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5TD3sprCkeXCrZ2kWu4grz?si=tb2MxMygQV2GWbfu0TNFgw)
> 
> title from [the kids aren't alright by fall out boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR7U7_cKJw4)
> 
> All of the places referenced in this fic are real places that have made me insanely fond of the city in the past few years.

When Jaebeom’s therapist opens the door on Monday afternoon, she gives him a critical eyeballing. “You look like shit. Please, step into my office.”

Michelle’s office is actually just a tiny slice of her tiny fourth-floor walkup studio in Tribeca. It’s an old construction, lived-in and creaky, and when Jaebeom sinks into the cushy chair wedged in the corner next to her desk the wall groans with the effort of holding his back upright. Across the room, a print of Angela Davis stares him down, fist raised in defiance.

The first time he looked her in the eye it made him shrink away. Now, a couple of months into… this (“recovery,” Jinyoung smugly, softly pointed out once, squeezing his shoulder), the look feels like a good challenge, fierce and loving and uncompromising in a way that makes him squirm, like the petals in the bud of his heart are trying to burst out, ready for something more.

All of Michelle’s walls are like that, chock full of artifacts and posters; blues records stacked into the bookshelf, healing crystals on the south-facing windowsill, a mural of photographed faces of close and extended family in differing shades of black and brown, multiple framed degrees and a Puerto Rican flag having pride of place above her desk. Radical self-love.

(It took a lot of coaxing to open up to the idea of that. Self-love simply as a concept, wispy and incorporeal. He’s still not sure it’s not something solely reserved for people who aren’t so fucking repressed — people who don’t get so fucking mad all the time. Maybe it’s only for people who know how to feel something that isn’t a sizzling iron of fury in the place of their spine.

“How does the world not make you angry?” he asked once, old thorns throbbing and pulsing and _painful_ inside, tearing into his guts in the same scarred, pitted places. “When you have so much to be angry about. How do you do it?”

The creases around Michelle’s mouth bowed with her sardonic smile. The deep mahogany color of her eyes did nothing to quell the fire inside them. “The world always makes me angry. I let it. It comes, moves through me, compels me to act or to seethe and vent. I’m allowed to feel like that, like anyone else is, like you are. But I can’t hold onto it. I have to find a way to let it go. You know as well as anybody if you don’t put it somewhere, it stays and rots.”

“Where do I put it, then?” Jaebeom wondered, thick around the knot in his throat.

“We’re here to figure that out,” Michelle reminded him. “Together.”)

“So,” Michelle begins, flipping open her legal pad. He’s been seeing her for months, and still a little bubble of fear rises in his throat every time he watches her raise her pen. In his experience, writing things down makes them real. “How was your weekend?”

“Ah,” Jaebeom says, color rising to his cheeks. “It was. Nice.”

Michelle observes him quietly for a moment. “Then why do you look like you haven’t slept a wink?”

“I slept some,” Jaebeom protests. “And I only smoked one cigarette all weekend, ‘cause Ba—”

Michelle breaks into a broad grin. “Oh?”

Jaebeom groans, throwing his head back. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Why the hell not? I’m old, let me live vicariously through you and your rockstar dating life.”

“This is so embarrassing,” Jaebeom cringes, covering his face with his hands.

“Who you gotta be embarrassed for? Me and Ms. Davis aren’t judging,” Michelle cackles. She raises an eyebrow. “Did you have fun?”

A sliver of a sweet pink smile flashes in front of Jaebeom’s eyes and a tiny, central spot in his chest blooms with warmth. “Yes.”

* * *

Jaebeom remembers noticing him even with blinders on.

These days, it’s a lot easier for him to acknowledge that the laser focus he used to have on Mark turned nearly everything and everyone else into background noise, static that was easy to tune out when it displeased him — even down to his other bandmates, his friends and their clear, positive intentions.

That was the point.

He tries not to feel too guilty about it, now.

But Bambam defies being ignored. Even in the depths of Jaebeom’s most spiteful, stormy mood that summer, it didn’t require much effort on his part to lean in and flirt with the pretty boy, dewy and glowing in his knee socks in the early evening heat, distracting him just long enough to get away with stealing Jinyoung’s keys.

“What are you doing?” he had asked, sharp and accusing as Jaebeom leaned up from closing the guitar case.

“Sorry,” Jaebeom apologized, holding his hands up in entreaty, BMW fob already burning a hole in his pocket. “Thought it was Jackson’s.”

The kid looked suspicious still, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his chin. “Your stuff is all over there, man. Do you need glasses or something?”

Jaebeom prickled slightly but stood up, smirking when he realized he was looking down at the boy despite the spindly lengths of his legs under khaki shorts. “Maybe so, kid. When you grow up you’ll probably need some too.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty one.”

Jaebeom snorted.

Usually by this point, people would have been scared off by his stature or the gruffness of his tone, much less the two of them combined, but the kid seemed immune to it. Or maybe, Jaebeom thought, eyeing the tense set of the boy’s jaw, the stubbornness just ran in these Ivy League shitheads. So he changed course. “Okay, sweetheart. It was an honest mistake. I’ll be leaving now.”

The bassist’s cheeks pinkened, but his frown went deeper. “My name is Bambam. Dude, we’ve been opening for you for weeks and you still don’t know?”

Jaebeom shrugged, unflappable, and chucked him under the chin. “Sweetheart fits though, doesn’t it?”

Bambam blinked. “I—”

“I like the uniforms,” Jaebeom continued, grasping onto the memory of him flurrying around backstage with three garment bags. He probably makes them himself. “Works with the theme.”

“The theme? You mean our ‘overly ironic pseudo-intellectual M83 wannabe alternative bullshit?’” Bambam said, eyes flashing. “Isn’t that what you called it?”

“I was just going to say the boy scout shorts make your butt look good, but whatever.”

Bambam bristled, caught off guard and blushing again. “I don’t have a butt,” he countered with a hint of a reluctant smile curling in at the corners of his mouth.

Jaebeom stepped closer. “I wouldn’t mind checking for myself,” he said, low and sultry.

He was just close enough to see the flutter of lashes, to watch the sharp rise of his chest under the knot of the bandana before Bambam spoke, soft but biting like a sour candy. “If you weren’t such an asshole to my best friend maybe you could have. But I guess you’ll have to settle for watching me walk away.”

The boy leveled him with one last long warning look before pulling out of Jaebeom’s orbit with ease, turning on his heel and trudging back toward the bonfire.

Jaebeom watched for a moment, seeing the way he blended in with the group of musicians next to the crackling logs, chatting familiarly with Jaebeom’s own friends. Like he belonged there. Even with the keyboardist distracted by Jackson, even with Jinyoung off somewhere, dopily, foolishly leading Mark away from the group and away from Jaebeom — from _Jaebeom_ , and he just _went along_ , eyes glittering —

Jaebeom sunk back into the shadowy treeline, away from the dancing orange light, into the bubbling tar only he knew so well.

—

“You know I can’t come,” Jinyoung chides over the phone. “They’re doing trackwork at the 72nd Street station and if I tried to catch a cab down it would already be almost time for you to leave anyway.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that earlier,” Jaebeom snips as he looks into the foggy bathroom mirror, pushing his wet hair off his forehead. “Or you could just walk south a few blocks, you bougie bitch.”

“I’m not the one calling for backup for one date,” Jinyoung volleys, entirely unsympathetic. In the background, Jaebeom can make out the sounds of the city filtering in Jinyoung’s open window and for a brief, painful moment he longs for the times when they felt nothing together. Anything to quell the unstoppable nausea that keeps churning in his gut at the idea of doing something so hilariously foreign to him as taking someone out on a date.

Jaebeom stares at his reflection, half-steamed-over, cheeks flushed and sticky from the humidity. Wonders for just a second who in their right mind would want to spend time with someone like him. Remembers the way Michelle had levelled him with a look over her reading glasses and told him that the negative self-talk doesn't actually reflect the way that people think of him. Not usually.

But he is so… and Bambam is bright; burning hot and vibrant, unapologetically himself. All Jaebeom does these days is vacillate between feeling sorry for being who he is and feeling viciously protective over it.

Jinyoung must sense something in the silence. “Jaebeom, you’re going to do fine. He already likes you."

"He doesn't know me."

"He likes what he does know," Jinyoung points out. "And he’s been talking about how good looking you are for, frankly, an unbearably long time.”

“That’s just stating a fact,” Jaebeom says blandly, frown cracking at the edges when Jinyoung crows in loud complaint over the line. The familiarity of bickering is soothing enough that it carries on with Jaebeom as he finishes getting ready; he shimmies himself into some jeans that aren’t torn to shit and a short sleeve button-up and wrangles his still-damp hair off of his face before stepping out into the oppressive New York summer heat.

He hops in a taxi and hopes that the musty, sweaty scent of the last rider in the backseat doesn’t stick onto him as he texts Jinyoung about a million questions that came to his mind at the last minute, and double and triple checks that he gave the driver the right Chinatown address Bambam had sent him earlier.

 _there’s a fruit seller with a rainbow umbrella right downstairs so if you don’t hear a guy hawking durian at you in loud Canto you’re not in the right spot haha_ 💘

The arrow heart grows wings and flutters around in Jaebeom’s head.

The cabbie takes him exactly to the right place; there’s an old man with a rainbow umbrella and a cart full of giant, spiky fruits baking in the hot sun, gesticulating and calling out to the glut of people wading across the sidewalk. He also has a bucket attached to the side of his apparatus with a full bloom of sunflowers, and Jaebeom buys a handful of them on a clumsy impulse.

The little cutout of the front doorway between trinket shops sees him squinting at the names and out-of-order numbers on the buzzer. The sticker for 7B is so faded he’s not sure it’s even the right one when he leans on it, but then a familiar voice answers, staticky over the line. “Jackson, I already told you I’m not forgiving you unless you have those special soup dumplings.”

Jaebeom bites down on a big grin. “It’s not Jackson, actually, it’s Jaebeom.”

“Ah,” Youngjae says in stiff, professional surprise, and then again, “ _oh_ , I see. I was wondering what Bam was getting all dressed up fo—ouch!”

Not even a second later, a different voice is coming out of the speaker. “Be right down!” Bambam calls out, a little shrill. “Don’t mind the idiot behind the curtain.”

Jaebeom blinks and waits, rubbing his thumb just inside his pocket against the nearly-crushed pack of American Spirits he shoved in there (“just in case,” he said to no one) on his way out the door. In the time it takes for him to tap his toes and to consider pulling one out and smoking it, he can hear someone thundering down the stairs inside and —

“Oh, hey,” Bambam says, leaning in the doorway with a casual pose, pretending not to struggle catching his breath. He puffs a little out of his bottom lip, shifting his newly honey brown bangs off his forehead.

Jaebeom drinks in the vision of the long, thin line of him propped up against the jamb, panting and flushed cherry in his high cheekbones, and starts when he realizes he didn’t even respond. “Hi,” he laughs, a little airy and self-conscious.

But Bambam doesn’t seem to clock it, busy giving Jaebeom a thorough elevator look of his own and stopping on the path back upward from Jaebeom’s feet. “Are those for me?”

“Um.” Jaebeom props the sunflowers up with a weak right elbow, suddenly feeling incredibly foolish. “Yeah. I mean. Yes.”

“Thank you.” Bambam’s cheeks go round and soft when he really smiles, taking the shrimpy bouquet in hand and sticking his face into the petals.

Jaebeom watches the yellow reflect across his skin, the pink in his cheeks, peachy-orange pigment pressed in around his big eyes and black eyelashes. “Are you wearing makeup?”

“Yeah,” Bambam says easily, bobbing down the stoop stairs. He swims into the tourists and locals picking and haggling through the infinite wares for sale on Mott Street, and looks over his shoulder with an arched, shaped eyebrow. “Got a problem with it?”

Jaebeom flushes and follows him this time.

—

There’s a lot of things Jaebeom wasn’t prepared for before his first ever real-life date.

He’s not ready for how awkward it feels to be chatting with someone who isn’t his therapist, a music industry rep or someone he’s known for years. Venturing into conversation without knowing the depth and scope of who Bambam is and how to talk to him wracks his nerves, but he responds to everything with vigor — whether he likes the neighborhood (“it’s the only place in Manhattan I can get my hands on durian, so yes,” and laughs when Jaebeom makes a face), what his summer job at the fashion house is like (“exhausting, but fun. I’m sure you understand that.”), and why he would wear heeled boots to walk around in the middle of summer in New York (“what, and _not_ dress up for my date with a rock star? Yeah, right.”).

Not that Jaebeom’s complaining. His long legs, his billowy sheer shirt and the streaks of dirty blonde kissed through his dark hair make him look like a summer mirage; he seems like an otherworldly interloper, too pretty by far for the odorousness and grey concrete of the city despite the places where his foundation is getting melted by sweat.

He’s not ready for how every answer makes him feel a little looser, a little more willing to offer up his own in turn — where he lives (“Christopher Street,” he says, and Bambam nods solemnly. “For the gays.”), how the album is coming along (“Well, I think. Really, really well. It’s more of us than it ever has been.”), and who he’s taking with him as his date to the release show.

“I—” Jaebeom nearly screeches to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk. “I didn’t know I was supposed to bring a date...?”

Bambam grins. “I’m sure you don’t _have_ to. You’re the frontman, nobody’s going to question you. But….”

“But,” Jaebeom follows along, catching up to Bambam’s long strides.

“But I’m sure you have a plus one,” he finishes, casting an unassuming glance at Jaebeom out of the corner of his eye. “It would be a shame to let it go to waste.”

The little jump Jaebeom’s stomach does at Bambam’s smirk doesn’t escape his notice.

The worst of the things he isn’t expecting is walking Bambam to a trendy, expensive, well-rated-on-Yelp restaurant in the Lower East Side and finding it boarded up, completely abandoned with signs over the awnings promising a new opening in two weeks as something completely different. “Fuck.”

“What’s up?” Bambam peers over his slumping shoulder. “Aw, man, that sucks.”

Frustration swells under Jaebeom’s ribs. “It was open the last time I checked.” _Sorry, sorry, god I’m fucking sorry, I’m ruining this already_ , he just barely doesn’t say.

A warm palm descends between Jaebeom’s shoulder blades, rubbing comfort against the bumps of his spine through his shirt. “Hey, it’s okay. It happens all the time.” Bambam slides his hand into the soft inside of Jaebeom’s elbow. “Why don’t we get a drink or two and figure out dinner after?”

“Are you sure?” Jaebeom says, half a second away from pulling out his phone and googling for something, annoyance with himself fading as Bambam smiles at him.

“I’m sure.” Bambam squeezes his arm in his long fingers. “Let’s see where the night takes us.”

—

First it whisks them to a divey bar across the street from Roosevelt Park, both of them sweating and gulping down their first drinks in short order. Jaebeom tries not to stare too long at the line of Bambam’s neck when he throws back the last of his gin and tonic.

Bambam waits for their second drinks to threaten Jaebeom with a game of pool, and it’s obvious in the first few shots he has no idea what he’s doing.

Jaebeom in comparison, having been a resident of shitholes like this long before he was legally allowed to be in them, is having a great game. He sinks two stripes in two shots, and when Bambam speaks up his voice is whinier than anything. “That’s not fair!”

“What’s not fair?” Jaebeom tries to hide his grin in the table as he leans in to shoot again after Bambam knocks the cue ball haphazardly toward the six, the cue barely missing before rolling to a sluggish stop.

“You’re way too good at this. You shouldn’t have let me challenge you!”

“And how is that my fault?” Jaebeom asks.

Bambam fumes for just a second, glaring underneath the cheesy promotional Miller Lite lamp hanging over the table before taking a big, hearty sip of his drink. He points at Jaebeom with the chalky blue end of his stick, threatening. “Fuck you and your competency. Teach me.”

Jaebeom snorts as Bambam marches around the table. “Why should I do that? I like winning.”

“Because,” Bambam insists nonsensically, wedging into the space between Jaebeom and the side of the table. He smells like sandalwood cologne and sunscreen, and Jaebeom’s heart thumps hard in his chest when he glances over his shoulder.

There’s finally a trace of shyness in his big doe eyes. “Maybe I just want to get closer,” he breathes. “To winning. Of course.”

“Of course.” The flirtation makes Jaebeom’s stomach do flips, and he follows his instinct to rest a hand on Bambam’s hip, skittish and light just in case he gets told to fuck off.

He doesn’t. Instead, he explains the basics to Bambam just like that, using his free hand to point and show Bambam the angles he can aim from, the way to flick his wrist to get the stick moving, where to look at the cue ball when he’s trying to hit it head on.

Bambam doesn’t bother to move from in front of Jaebeom to take his next shot. He sinks it precariously, solid-colored ball teetering on the edge before finally deciding to fall in. “I did it!” he squeals and jumps, spinning around to wrap arms around Jaebeom’s neck.

Jaebeom freezes up just for a moment before hugging Bambam around his waist. He laughs, half in relief that he could manage to defrost and let himself be held, and half because, well…. “You did. You sunk the eight ball.”

Bambam pulls back to slap lightly at his chest. “Stop laughing at me. I hit one; that’s a win in my book.”

“Yeah, the only one that means you lose automatically in everyone else’s book.”

Bambam sticks out his tongue. “Everyone else is stupid.”

“Everyone? Including me?”

“Especially you.”

—

Jaebeom slows down as they walk past a crumbly brick facade. It’s an art studio; he’s seen it before, when Jackson insists he get out of the apartment for a while, haul across the island and meet him at the northwest corner of Roosevelt Park. He doesn’t appreciate the cramps and stitches he gets out of a game of tennis, but he has maybe grown begrudgingly fond of the sunlight and trees and the way his friend laughs joyfully every time they get to play together. Not that he’d ever let him have the satisfaction of knowing that.

He’s never had the time to do more than a cursory, curious glance to the place before moving on.

There’s a Basquiat in the window.

Jaebeom gapes.

“Hey,” Bambam pipes from beside him, “you wanna look around?”

“We don’t have to?” Jaebeom hedges. As much fun as flirting and chatting with Bambam has been, Jaebeom is still woefully inept at cushioning the parts of his personality that aren’t exactly fun — aren’t fueled purely by adrenaline and a tiny bit of alcohol.

Bambam, again, makes the decision for him, peering inside the open doorway. “Well, I want to. Let’s go.”

Basquiat is one of Jaebeom’s favorite artists. There’s something about the grit and fervor of his work that speaks to something deep and abiding in Jaebeom: righteous anger and rebellion, the scratching malice of words that shoots right through you when tied to vivid nonverbal artistry. The way his art shows his beliefs with uncompromising clarity; the way it loves the underappreciated and rejects the accepted, the way he represented the complications of his community and his own mind.

Somewhere in the middle of looking at a large, fervid canvas overlaid with pinks and blues and bloody reds, Jaebeom realizes he’s talking out loud to Bambam, and it’s only toward the end of his train of thought that he notices Bambam’s gone silent next to him.

Jaebeom finds himself petering out, worried that he’ll look over and Bambam will be asleep standing up or something, but.

He’s looking back at Jaebeom with big, fascinated eyes. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Jaebeom feels oddly at ease in the silence. His soul settles momentarily, feathers lying flat from their frantic ruffling. “I didn’t mean to monologue at you,” he says, but it doesn’t feel like he actually has to apologize.

“I know you didn’t,” Bambam murmurs back, gaze still bolted to Jaebeom’s face. His lips curl. “I like hearing what you have to say.”

Jaebeom blushes and stutters, but Bambam cuts him off with another pass of his big spindly hand down Jaebeom’s upper arm in half a calming gesture and half to cop a feel, if the way he’s squeezing his bicep is any indication. From this distance, Jaebeom can smell his cologne again.

It reminds him of the first day they met at the edge of town, young and daring in a place that seems so far removed from the stink and pulse of the city. But it fits Bambam right now, too — grinning and lively and youthful, sharp like the pops off of the lit end of a sparkler on a muggy summer night. It matches the way that he leans in, tallish in his boots, and presses a fleeting kiss to the hot, embarrassed swath of Jaebeom’s cheek, insisting before even separating his lips from his skin: “Cutest. I could just eat you up.”

Jaebeom swallows hard, bottle rocket fizz shooting up his spine. “I really—” he coughs, trying to shake off the way Bambam being so close is already filling him from the bottom up with something warm, “I...really like art.”

When Bambam pulls back, he doesn’t look the slightest bit disappointed. His big eyes shine, in fact, even when he stops smirking so hugely. “Of course you do. You’re an artist yourself.”

“Does my shitty rock music really count as art?”

“Why don’t you ask the 250,000 copies sold of your last album?” Bambam shoots back. “That doesn’t even matter, anyway,” he continues, waving his hand in front of his face like he’s shooing the thought away, “You play music that you invented in your imagination. You piece songs together. You create and collaborate on work that is beautiful and meaningful and speaks to people. That’s fucking art.”

Now it’s Jaebeom’s turn to be speechless.

It’s not often that Jaebeom gets to hear, in blunt, realistic terms, just how people feel about him, or his art, or what he does for a living. Almost everyone outside of the tightest, innermost ring of people surrounding him tries to couch everything in these grand, sweeping words and promises about the band’s future; or on the other end, spending all of their time vocally doubting his every career move and artistic choice as if their word is law. And even in his circle — Jaebeom values the place that he’s gotten to with his bandmates and friends, and that all the words left so long unsaid between them came out, and that he knows, now, that he doesn’t have to dig for their true meanings anymore.

Bambam pinkens under his stare.

Typically, Jaebeom tries not to make a big deal about handfuls of nice words, even if they move him deeply. But here in the blasting air conditioning, with Bambam looking slightly embarrassed but steadfast, clutching onto him even in his discomfort, Jaebeom can’t help it. “Thank you.”

His nervousness softens, melting into Jaebeom’s side. “You’re welcome.” Then, between the two of them in the quiet studio, someone’s stomach growls.

Bambam giggles. “I think it might be dinner time.”

—

Bambam drags them several more blocks uptown to St. Mark’s Place as the evening darkens. “I thought of something good,” he swears up and down the whole long walk, swinging their hands. “I think you’ll like it. You seem like the type.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Just trust me!”

Jaebeom already likes St. Mark’s — he’s gotten piercings and tattoos done at a couple of the shops, played open mics at some of the grungier bars and picked through some of the used bookstores by Tompkins Square. It’s a wonder, then, when Bambam slows them to a stop in front of a set of stairs down into a restaurant he’s never seen, under a conspicuously red, three-foot-long model of a hot dog.

Jaebeom cranes his neck to look up at the sign. _Eat me_ , it says along the side in cheerful yellow mustard. “Is this just an extended dick joke?”

Bambam snorts. “Only partially. And anyway,” he leans in so as not to be overheard by the slowly crowding sidewalk, “if you’re not interested in eating wieners we should probably call this whole thing off.”

Jaebeom feels his face go a deep cherry red. “Bambam!” he hisses, mortified.

The man in question just screeches giddily, wrapping his arms around Jaebeom’s waist from the back to laugh more against his shoulder. “You’re so funny. You’re so anti-establishment and then you get embarrassed by dick jokes.”

“I get embarrassed by bad dick jokes,” Jaebeom insists, trying not to let the obvious glee in Bambam’s voice infect him any further, fighting down a grin. “You’re embarrassing.”

“If I’m so embarrassing, why are you holding my hand still?”

Jaebeom shakes him off, elbowing gently until Bambam whines and releases him, coming around to pull him down the stairs. He doesn’t let go of Jaebeom’s hand.

The smell of fired-up fryers and the chatter of a crowded restaurant rise up to greet them on their descent. It’s a cozy little place; small and low maintenance with classic tabletop arcade games holding up everyone’s baskets of tater tots and cold beers. Only a few people are actually making attempts at Mrs. Pac-Man or Galaga, the rest opting to spend their entry into the weekend drinking as many PBRs as they can fit onto their table.

Jaebeom loves it.

“See!” Bambam crows, smile glowing under the can lights, poking at Jaebeom’s rising cheek. “I knew you would like it.”

Jaebeom bats him away, reaching for his wallet. “What do you want?”

“I can get it.”

“It’s not polite; I’m the one who asked you out.”

“Oh, wow, Mr. Chivalry, what year is it? I can split the bill for a goddamn hot dog.”

“I already talked your ear off about art, I owe you _something._ ”

“You don’t owe me anything for being a nerd.” Bambam gives him a long look, biting a little at his bottom lip. “Well. I mean, unless you want to later….”

Heat blooms under Jaebeom’s collar. “I. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Bambam smiles something just shy of wicked. “Me too.”

—

After a couple sets of cheap beers and hot dogs, Bambam pulls him toward the phonebooth in the corner.

“What,” Jaebeom says, looking at the depth of it where it’s carved into the wall. It’s probably only big enough to fit Bambam, much less the both of them.

“Have I led you astray yet?” Bambam asks, fluttering his eyelashes.

They wedge inside, Jaebeom hesitant about getting so precariously close right up until the moment Bambam yanks him all the way inside, stuck between the wall and Bambam’s back as he picks up the handset attached to the wall.

He’s so warm, and close, and Jaebeom is tipsy off of sweating and beer and Bambam’s honking laugh, so he throws all caution to the wind and sways forward, resting his chin on his shoulder.

To Bambam’s credit, he doesn’t even flinch, still talking to someone down the line. “No, I know I _should_ have made a reservation but can’t you just do me a solid this one time?” He reaches up without looking and runs his hand through Jaebeom’s hair, curling it over his ear and down his neck. A line of goosebumps follows his fingertips. “My sister’s girlfriend working at a speakeasy has to have _some_ perks, right?”

There’s a little bit of shouting over the line, and Jaebeom jumps, alarmed, when it’s immediately followed by the wall to the left of him shifting and disappearing. A dimly lit room lies beyond.

“Go, before she changes her mind!” Bambam hisses.

The room is the interior of a darkened bar, leather seats and wood panel ceiling heightening the intimacy, and as soon as they both get inside (and thank the hostess for letting them in) Jaebeom notices the blue-haired bartender standing at the closed edge, frowning deeply.

“Hey Mel!” Bambam sing-songs, tangling his fingers with Jaebeom’s to drag him over to the open barstools in front of her.

“You are such a little asshole,” she tells him.

“Dude! I’m on a date, you can’t talk about me like that.”

“Wanna bet?” The woman turns her eyes on Jaebeom. “He’s a little asshole, don’t buy his cute ass act. His sister is the same way.”

“I noticed,” Jaebeom says, grinning when Bambam whinges and slaps at his arm. “What do you do when she’s like that?”

Mel smirks. “I have my ways of sorting it out.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Bambam groans. “Please can we get a drink and stop talking about this?”

Mel decides to stop there and actually show them the menu, a surprisingly peaceful ending judging by the way Bambam relaxes and smiles at her over the bar. The craft cocktails the two bartenders whip up for them while attending the rest of the bar are delicious and vibrant, and sipping at his drink while he and Bambam drift closer and closer on their stools is making his face and neck and chest warm.

“You’re not the same as before,” Bambam says, loose and a little drunk, sucking on a cherry stem from his Dirty Shirley. “Can I say that?”

“No,” Jaebeom says. “I don’t think I am either.”

Bambam blinks at him a few times, reading his face. He proceeds slowly. “Is that what you wanted?”

“Not at first.”

He traces his thumb down the back of Jaebeom’s hand, his knuckles. “What changed your mind?”

“Before meds and therapy?” Jaebeom thinks, turning his hand over so Bambam can tickle over the lines in his palm. “I guess I... didn’t really have anything left to lose.”

“And how do you feel now?” Bambam shakes his head as if to clear it, pressing his hand to the embarrassed color rising on his cheek. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that, I’m —”

“No, it’s okay.” Jaebeom inhales, exhales — lets himself sit with the question, with Bambam in this moment, with his sneaking buzz and the zaps of electricity between them when they brush against each other. “Different,” he agrees, simply.

Mel shoos them out after an hour and fifteen minutes, tapping a sign on the wall. “House rules, sorry. I even gave you till quarter after! You’re getting preferential treatment, you spoiled brat.” Bambam yanks the bill out of Jaebeom’s reach, and leaves a hefty tip for everyone subject to their antics.

“So,” Bambam says, dragging out the vowel sound, watching Jaebeom light the first cigarette he’s had in three days while they linger out on the sidewalk. It’s a little after midnight, and though the heat has died down it’s still sticky in the way all East Coast summers are; like the air is trying to imbue the world it settles on with life-giving water but it gives up halfway; like a semi-permanent plaster of sweat.

“So,” Jaebeom chimes back, amused. It’s kind of funny — even with his lack of practice talking about how he feels, he’s not used to _this_ process being so obtuse.

Bambam is close, and his skin radiates warmth before he even finishes closing his hand around Jaebeom’s. “I had a really good time today,” he murmurs.

Oh. “Me too.” His heart does a funny little twist when Bambam beams at him. It flips when their fingers tangle without a second thought.

“Also like,” Bambam shrugs, trying for unaffected, “I don’t know if you could tell, but I wouldn’t mind seeing what you look like under your clothes.”

Jaebeom laughs, surprised at how soft it sounds coming around the warmth in his chest and out of his throat. “Can’t say I don’t feel the same way.”

“My shirt is sheer,” Bambam points out, licking his bottom lip. Jaebeom can’t tear his eyes away from the wet streak his tongue leaves behind. “You can just look.”

“I have. I want to see more.”

Bambam leans into Jaebeom’s space, close enough that he can smell dewy maraschino on his breath. His big brown eyes are heavy and drop down toward Jaebeom’s mouth, and further south. “Your cigarette is out.”

“I don’t care,” Jaebeom says, and leans in.

Bambam tastes like cherries and he laughs a little, caught in his mouth, at Jaebeom’s eagerness before his free hand curls under Jaebeom’s jaw.

For a second, he has no idea what to do, adrenaline flying through him but not giving him a plan of attack — he’s not used to kissing without sharp edges, and the idea of gripping too hard and risking Bambam flitting off like a colorful summer bird is nerve-wracking enough that he bites down a little, surprised, when Bambam flicks his tongue in his mouth.

He gets all worked up to say sorry, but in the second where he pulls away to take a breath Bambam is crowding him further, hand on his face now, thumb at the corner of his mouth when he drags their lips back together. He presses at that crux — on purpose or accidentally, Jaebeom doesn’t know — and Jaebeom shivers through his whole body when his mouth opens further all on its own, willing, letting itself be nibbled at and sucked on and explored on a sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan, shameless. He feels his cigarette slip out of his fingers when he clutches at Bambam’s shirt. Bambam groans against him, low and pleased like a purr.

Bambam is the one to pull away, rearing back from Jaebeom to analyze his face but keeping his hand held tight. He makes a decision before pulling them out into the street. “Yeah. Yeah. Taxi!”

-

When they get out of the cab, Jaebeom can just barely hear the scrape of a tin can on concrete from the alley over Bambam lamenting that he forgot his bouquet when he put it down in the bathroom. “You have to buy me another one,” he insists, wrapping arms around Jaebeom’s waist and pouting into the back of his neck.

“I will,” he says distractedly, leading them away from his building’s front door and down the alley toward the dumpster. Bambam notices belatedly that they don’t seem to be heading toward any type of indoors, and _huh_ s into his shoulder.

Jaebeom squeezes his wrist before prying him off. “Just one sec.” He has to see something.

He approaches the dumpster with light, quiet feet and crouches, listening for the sound of the can again. Sure enough, in the shadowy darkness next to the big back wheel is a half eaten tin of tuna and a pair of suspicious green eyes looking back at him. “Hey, girl,” he murmurs. “Just making sure you got your food.”

The muddy brown tabby licks her lips up at him in answer. He grins back.

When Jaebeom straightens, he notices Bambam standing close and looking at him oddly. “What?”

“I didn’t know you like cats,” his date says, dreamy, laying hands on his chest.

“Oh,” Jaebeom manages in the breathless second before Bambam is kissing him senseless. “I do,” he gasps, when Bambam finally pulls away. “I do like cats.”

Bambam smiles dopily at him. “Me too.”

The two of them make it around the corner and up all those stairs, somehow, in spite of their dragging hands and pauses against the wall to trade slick, thorough dips into each other’s mouths. Jaebeom smirks against Bambam’s lips when he squeaks at a rough squeeze to his ass, but he doesn’t get to be smug very long. Bambam gets a hand in his hair at the landing in front of his place and _pulls_ , right at the root, and Jaebeom keens loud enough for it to echo down the stairwell.

Bambam giggles, mouth still so soft and lush against Jaebeom’s when he talks. “Do you want to continue this inside?”

Jaebeom licks at the taste of him on his bottom lip and obliges, fighting with the sticky lock on the door and dragging him in behind, kicking off their shoes and stumbling onto the sofa. Bambam plops down onto his lap with a soft, huffing laugh and murmurs a sweet little _hi there_ when Jaebeom smooths his hand down the nicks of his spine to settle at the curve, sweeps the other under his thigh to feel how solid and warm he is, even through thick black denim.

They spend so long like that, making out on Jaebeom’s couch, time dripping by in a viscous vein like honey. Jaebeom can’t remember for the life of him the last time he touched someone without any sort of expectation of more behind it — just nerves, just the metronome ticking of his heart, quick and heavy. Every time he thinks Bambam is going to pull away, or feels like they’re on the edge of something, Bambam sinks back against him comfortably and sighs into his mouth in content. The warmth between them sways and rolls like river waves licking a rocky shore.

When they do separate Bambam is flushed and grinning from his sweet swollen mouth, though while he looks at Jaebeom, the corners drop a little bit. Jaebeom is too dazed and busy catching his breath to notice it at first, but the longer Bambam just sits there, fingers twirling in the long hair at the back of Jaebeom’s neck, the more he sobers up.

“What?” Jaebeom breathes, suddenly feeling heat in his cheeks all over again, shuffled into himself by the warmth spreading down his jaw and neck as Bambam stares.

“Nothing,” Bambam assures him, curling long fingers under his chin to pull him up into another slow, sensuous kiss for half a second before he pulls away again, lips separating with a wet smack. “No, you’re just — god, you’re gorgeous, Jaebeom.”

His hands squeeze tight, reflexive and surprised, around Bambam’s waist. “You have to say that.”

Bambam’s too busy leaving damp little kisses against the hinge of his jaw to respond at first. “Do I?” he purrs right into Jaebeom’s ear, quiet but steady and firm. He pushes Jaebeom’s chin with his thumb, tilting his head back to bare his neck, and sucks a hot bite into the skin over his pulse with no warning. Jaebeom tries not to sound too pitiful when he yelps and arches into it, clutching at him again, fingertips digging into his lower back under his shirt. “I appreciate beautiful things. Do you think I’d be here in the first place if you weren’t one of them?”

“That’s so cheesy,” Jaebeom accuses. It doesn’t have quite the weight he wants it to, thin and melting into half a moan at the end when Bambam licks over the same sensitive spot under his jaw.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” he insists, all sugar. “Now,” he continues, sliding closer to Jaebeom on his lap, grinning when Jaebeom shivers at the pressure against his hard-on. “Stop thinking so much.”

Jaebeom is eager to comply. He loses himself completely in the way Bambam kisses him deeper, head lolling until he supports it with a light but solid grip around his jaw, fingertips pressed against the hinge where it connects to his skull. He’s being _held,_ gripped like something wriggling and alive, not tight enough to hurt but not loose enough to feel like he can escape.

Prickling, smoky warmth unfurls in the pit of his stomach. It’s like he can feel Bambam getting hotter against him, the press of his hand and the depth of his breath — and the way he echos back all the little sounds he pulls out of Jaebeom with bites to his lower lip and shifting on his lap and putting his other hand in Jaebeom’s hair again to pull playfully at the ends.

It builds, filling up his chest and crawling out of his throat when he moans, gripping onto Bambam’s hips as he grinds down in an artful little tease. But the color at his throat is a consolation, the way he’s gripping harder on the back of Jaebeom’s neck now. He’s feeling it just as much as Jaebeom is.

Their hands roam further, Jaebeom’s creeping into where Bambam’s shirt is tucked in at the back of his jeans, and Bambam rolling fingers down his stomach to tease at the stiff line of his cock through denim more directly, brushing his knobby knuckles up and down.

“Can we —” Jaebeom is saying before he can stop himself. “Can….”

“Mmm? What is it, sweetheart?”

Jaebeom’s tongue turns jelly in his mouth. “I— _oh_ , god,” he pants, squeezing at Bambam’s sides when he swivels down on his zipper again. “Bedroom.”

Bambam laughs, half-air. “What about it?” His eyes burn a hole through Jaebeom’s face. “Use your words.”

Jaebeom’s whole head goes hot, like Bambam’s instruction is a kettle filling up the porcelain teapot of his skull, boiling from his neck to his crown. He struggles for a second, mouth moving but no sound coming out, and Bambam simply waits and watches, amused at his embarrassment. The heat spills down his spine, into his stomach and tingling between his thighs. “Didn’t you say to stop thinking?” Jaebeom asks, voice weak in his throat.

“You don’t need to think about it,” Bambam insists. “You know what you want. Just say it.”

Jaebeom’s eyes flutter closed. “Please,” he whispers, all of his internal organs going zero gravity. Here goes nothing. “Please fuck me.”

Bambam’s back to kissing him in an instant, soothing and hot and anticipating all at the same time. “I would love to.”

The thumping urgency of Jaebeom’s heart is there the same as ever, but when Bambam laughs out loud at the way they trip over each other on the way off the couch, it soothes, settles a little in how he can’t resist his own smile. Even after having lived here for a while, Jaebeom fumbles for the lightswitch in the darkness of his bedroom and gets distracted by the way Bambam crowds him up against the wall for a set of kisses that make him feel like he’s going to melt into the floor, rough at the edges where Bambam can’t seem to stop himself from biting Jaebeom’s lip into a swell.

Jaebeom doesn’t waste any time stripping his shirt off after the lightswitch makes itself known by poking him in the back, pleased with the sound of approval Bambam makes at him. He does, however, have to pull away from Bambam’s exploring hands to give it a quick little fold and leave it on the dresser.

“You don’t have t.... I just like being neat, is all,” Jaebeom says, only embarrassed at the compulsion for long enough to Bambam to unbutton his own shirt carefully, revealing a white tanktop and a tattoo on the back of his arm when he sets it down on top of the dresser. His mouth goes dry watching the light swells of muscle in his arms flex when he pulls the undershirt off too.

“Baby, this is Balmain. I was gonna do it anyway,” he quips, grinning at the heavy swallow Jaebeom takes after hearing the pet name. “Take off your pants and go lay down.”

Neck burning, Jaebeom does as he’s told. He trips out of the cuff of his jeans but makes it to the bed mostly intact, lying back on his elbows with his knees still dangling over the edge.

Bambam looks him over, arms crossed over his chest. “God. Stop being hot for two seconds, will you?”

Jaebeom flushes. “I can’t help it,” he mutters, a proud little smile sneaking out when Bambam laughs.

Bambam dives down to give him a slick, hot kiss, but when he goes to pull away, he leaves his hand on Jaebeom’s chest so he won’t be followed. “Stay.”

“I’m not a d—”

He sinks onto his knees.

Jaebeom gapes, forgetting completely what he was about to say.

“Maybe not a dog, but you are a good listener,” Bambam murmurs, amused, leaning in to mouth against the fabric at the crux of Jaebeom’s hip.

“I—” Jaebeom starts, shuddering when Bambam leaves a long, wet kiss there that he can feel straight through his boxers, humid and tingling against his pelvis. “I’m working on it.”

Bambam runs his hands down Jaebeom’s sides, warm and mapping, before pulling his underwear down his hips and knees. “I like it.” He smacks his ripe berry lips and Jaebeom’s heart skips a beat. “You’ve definitely been good for me, Jaebeom. I think you deserve a treat.”

“Fuck,” Jaebeom hears himself saying faintly, head buzzing, and then again when Bambam sinks his pretty mouth down around the head of him. “Oh, _fuck._ ”

Bambam hums around him, delighted with the reaction. His eyelashes flutter a little with the effort of going down further, throat flexing around him. Jaebeom’s stomach drops through the floor and then springs back up into the air, bungee cord attached behind his navel.

It’s another way for him to tease Jaebeom, to be sure. He seems to have a sense for it: every time Jaebeom gets wound up tight by the hot, wet pull of Bambam sucking his cock, he can tell in the way Jaebeom’s panting goes wonky and backs off, lips loosening, a little ghost of feeling. “Sensitive,” he pulls off to remark.

“No shit,” Jaebeom grits out.

Bambam smirks. He leans to the side, temple to Jaebeom’s thigh. “Am I teasing you too much?” he asks, breathing softly against the throbbing, damp underside of his cock and balls. He already knows the answer.

“What the hell do you think?”

“I think,” Bambam intones, voice sweet and low, “you could be a little more polite.”

Jaebeom chokes as Bambam’s fist closes tight around the base of his cock. “Oh my god.”

“That’s better, but you don’t have to call me god.” He snickers at his own joke and adjusts his hand a little, twisting, and Jaebeom feels it through his whole body like he stuck a fork in an electric outlet. When he makes a pitiful noise, Bambam pouts a little in sympathy Jaebeom suspects is entirely faked. “Poor thing.”

Bambam relaxes his hold just enough to stroke Jaebeom slow and tight and torturous, no rush at all, and it works Jaebeom up just as much as his mouth. “Jesus, fuck, _please_.”

“Oh, that’s _right_ ,” Bambam laughs, quiet and low, in between lapping the tip of his tongue against Jaebeom’s slit. His eyeshadow and mascara just serve to make his gaze look more intense like this, in the yellow light, licking his lips between Jaebeom’s legs like a predator. “You wanted something, didn’t you?”

Jaebeom slumps back, shuddering, eyes sliding closed faster than he can help it. “Yes. Please, please.”

“Mmm, better.” Bambam’s voice lulls him even with the coarse edge on it as he moves between Jaebeom’s knees, shuffling his thighs further apart. “That’s much better.” He’s approving, and it makes a little warm, contented swoosh stir in Jaebeom’s stomach even before he feels Bambam’s other fingers tickle underneath his balls, damp like he sucked them into his mouth —

Jaebeom has to bite down on his tongue just to keep himself from crying out at the pass of Bambam’s fingertips over his rim. He circles, one, two times before — Jaebeom moans a shivery, wretched “ _Bambam_ ” — the tips of his first two fingers are finally sinking in, slow and steady and with a sting that lances up Jaebeom’s spine to his brain stem.

“Like that?” Bambam asks. “Too dry?”

Jaebeom tries to sift through the jumble of his thoughts, trying to wrap his mind around how he feels, curling around the chafe to concentrate. He shifts, testing. “A little.”

Jaebeom hears Bambam sucking on his teeth this time, and by the time his eyes shoot open he can watch him spitting, dripping hot and wet down to Jaebeom’s taint. He pulls his fingers out, distributes it efficiently around Jaebeom’s hole and pushes back in deeper than he had before, taking Jaebeom’s breath away. “Better?”

The wounded noise of agreement is good enough for Bambam, judging by his smirk. “Just a little rough for the big baby boy, hm? I can do that.”

Jaebeom flushes so hard he has to cover his face, but Bambam’s pushing his hand away and twisting the.m together, pressing it down into the sheets over Jaebeom’s head. His fingers move and curl inside, and the little sparks of friction send goosebumps racing over Jaebeom’s skin. He watches Bambam watch him open up around him, and the realization makes him feel squirmy and virginal and small — embarrassed and reckless at the same time — hot, all over and inside, burning for more. He squeezes Bambam's hand hard, needing something to cling onto. “I don’t — you don’t need to. Too much.”

Bambam stills his fingers, searching Jaebeom’s face. “Is that what you want?”

“What you said… that’s what I want.” _A little rough for the big baby boy._

A shroud of understanding darkens Bambam’s eyes, sneaks into the corner of his mouth when he smirks and squeezes Jaebeom’s hand. “Cute. Where’s your lube?”

“Bedside table drawer,” Jaebeom breathes, hissing when Bambam drags his fingers unceremoniously out of him, then melting into the bed when he makes up for it with a kiss.

Jaebeom lays there, hazy and warm like he’s already been fucked out, watching Bambam rummage in the drawer. He pulls out a condom too, mumbling something about having left the ones he brought in the pocket of his pants. “Too far away.”

Jaebeom can’t help reaching out for him at the edge of the bed, fingers wiggling. “So’re you.”

Bambam doesn’t rush as he comes back around, hooking his thumbs in his boxer briefs. “Be patient.”

“I _have_ been.” Jaebeom pouts. His bottom lip instantly gets sucked back into his mouth at the sight of Bambam finally stripping bare, the pretty upward curve of his cock distracting. He swipes at the ooze of precome with his thumb, stroking himself and hissing, and Jaebeom chokes on his desire, how it weighs him down and makes his head spin, mouth tacky watching him put the condom on.

It’s been too long by far since Jaebeom has gotten fucked. It’s probably good for his health, he thinks vaguely in the face of Bambam crawling over him and smirking, but, well. He’s been good for so long. He’s been doing so much work, pulling parts of himself open and actually looking at their ugliness in the light of day for the first time. Maybe he deserves just this little bit of indulgence.

Bambam kisses him for what feels like the million and first time. “Okay being on your back?” Jaebeom replies by grasping at his arms, his small waist and broader shoulders. His skin is so warm, all over, and Jaebeom has to breathe deeply to stop himself from crushing Bambam down on top of him. He chuckles, low and sweet in his chest, and slots his hips between Jaebeom’s soft thighs. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

The squirt of lube is cold and sputtery against his taint, and they both laugh breathlessly, immaturely at the sound, Bambam still smiling when he spreads it down, swirls it against his rim and plunges inside again with his fingers. It’s as thorough a preparation as Jaebeom’s ever had, slick and open and relaxed and buzzing, buzzing, buzzing for more. “Bam,” Jaebeom hears himself blurt. He wraps his fingers around Bam’s thin wrist. “I haven’t gotten fucked in a goddamn eternity. Please put me out of my misery.”

Bambam makes a funny little honking giggle, flushed high in his pretty cheekbones. "I can do that."

He doesn't tease here, finally. Jaebeom cries out as Bambam nudges at the loose furl of his ass and sinks in, deep and filling, in one long, slow thrust. The sheets groan under his clenched fingers like he's trying really hard not to be worse, do more, and Jaebeom wants it to hurt. He clasps Bambam's head against him when he leans into his neck, breathing heavy and licking at his pulse.

“God,” Bambam groans against his skin, hips stuttering before smacking against Jaebeom’s ass like he can’t help it. “So fucking tight.”

Craving crawls over Jaebeom’s skin. “Yeah, fuck. Harder.” He curses again when Bambam grips him too tight around the hips, fingertips digging into his skin, red blooming around his painted nail beds and underneath, on Jaebeom’s skin. “Ah, fuck me, _fuck_ me.” He yanks Jaebeom down his cock as he thrusts, and stars burst behind Jaebeom’s eyelids.

Bambam snarls against his throat and picks up the pace at Jaebeom’s insistence, setting teeth in right under his chin, right in a place that wracks him with shivers every time it’s ever been sucked and kissed and chewed up like this. Jaebeom melts into it, squeezing Bambam’s styled hair in his fist and clutching onto his back, digging in whenever his mouth or his cock does something that drives him further toward insanity.

Bambam never makes a single noise of complaint as Jaebeom claws at him, scratching his unblemished satin skin like an animal. He just gives, and gives, and gives it to Jaebeom, rattling his teeth around in his skull.

He can hear himself — _oh, oh, oh fuck_ — and can’t be bothered to even feel embarrassed, too full and hot and woozy underneath Bambam to think. With the way Bambam’s adjusting his hips, pushing and pulling at Jaebeom to put him in exactly the position that he wants him, it’s like he doesn’t have to. Not a shred of brain power involved. He can just shut off everything and ride, throwing his head back into the sheets when Bambam’s cock prods at his prostate.

“Your voice is so sweet when you’re whining, baby.”

Jaebeom is putty in Bambam’s hands. “Feels good,” he slurs, eyes screwing shut when Bambam dips back down to seal his mouth around his nipple. He’s messy about it — too busy concentrating on fucking into him — but Jaebeom’s far and away from complaining about the glaze of spit and the sharp cut of his teeth over the bud. He moans a little, sharpening up into a yelp when Bambam sinks his incisors in.

“Bambam,” Jaebeom gasps as the pain scrapes hot against his nerve endings, sending his breath sawing like he’s on the edge of a sob, scrabbling at his shoulders. “Oh, god, please.”

“Like that? Like getting chewed up?” Bambam’s hair droops down in the humidity from his stilted breath against Jaebeom’s chest. He’s sweating along his hairline from the effort of dragging Jaebeom’s thick thighs up around his waist and fucking him stupid. “Want me to make it hurt, huh?”

Jaebeom’s forgotten cock blurts precome against his stomach, weeping like the words are a physical touch. “ _Mmf,_ god, yes,” he pleads, voice cracking, “fuck me up.”

So he does. Jaebeom regrets it not even a second later, when Bambam reaches up and pulls hard on the nipple he just spent so long tenderizing with his mouth, pulsing and oversensitive. His skin stretches in Bambam’s firm pinch and Jaebeom howls so loud a dog starts barking in another apartment.

Bambam laughs at him, and it sounds like something edging on real meanness, sharp at the edge of his tone. “This is what you wanted, Jaebeom,” he singsongs, releasing the pinch just long enough to swipe his thumb tenderly over it, and take his other nipple in hand, holding both. “If you change your mind, tell me.”

“Don’t stop,” he begs. Bambam listens.

It’s familiar but different. Jaebeom remembers the blurry, fervent way he used to yank Mark down on top of him until that was the habit, until Mark was finally broken down to his level and angry and spitting and brutal just like Jaebeom, and would fuck him hard and mean like he wanted. He remembers Jinyoung using him like a toy, like a dummy, a stand-in warm body for what they both wanted, and would sometimes give in to Jaebeom’s demons with him and fuck him with bared teeth and tight grips around his wrists, his hips, his throat.

Bambam is intentional. Every time Jaebeom can manage to crack open his eyes from squeezing shut at the burn and stab of having his nipples abused, Bambam is staring right back at him, reading his face. Whenever it seems like he’s being too kind and Jaebeom starts relaxing into it, rolling against Bambam’s cock seated in him, he starts the onslaught again, relentless. He uses his nails and his knuckles and his teeth and tongue until Jaebeom’s stomach is a mess of precome and fluttering, weakly, mortifyingly close to tears.

His whole chest radiates with his pulse, throbbing far beyond where Bambam cups each pec in his hand, laying soft kisses on each raw areola as Jaebeom whimpers. It drives Jaebeom a little crazy, the way he intersperses gentleness with the way he’s chewing Jaebeom to shreds, the way his cock fills him and fucks him. He squeezes Jaebeom’s sore chest in both hands and makes a pleased, fond sound at his dizzy whine.

Seemingly finished with his torture, Bambam leans back after a sweet kiss to Jaebeom’s sternum. “Let’s get you off, pretty boy.”

Even just feeling the warmth of his hand curling around his cock is electrifying after it’s been ignored for so long, thrumming with all the blood Jaebeom has in his body. It drools in content. There isn’t a square inch of him that doesn’t ache and sting with desire. It only worsens when Bambam starts fucking him with vigor again, with intent, with a hot sharpness in his eyes and a snap to his hips. “I — I’m...fuck, Bambam, I —”

“Close? You gonna come like this?” Bambam grimaces with effort, cursing as Jaebeom flutters around him, tightening his fist around the head of Jaebeom’s cock in turn. “I hope you don’t mind getting fucked through it. I’m not done with you yet.”

Jaebeom shivers, nasally and overwhelmed and teetering toward the edge, stomach doing triple backflips. “Fuck, yes, _please_.”

“Yeah, baby, yeah,” Bambam groans nonsensically. He swipes the rough pad of his thumb under the head, right where it’s the most sensitive. “Come on my cock, Jaebeom.”

Jaebeom chokes on his tongue and obeys, letting himself be shoved off the edge. His orgasm washes over him in thick, burning waves, pulsing through the tenderness of his chest and rolling down his spine. Bambam moans, a delighted sound, at the absolute mess he makes in his hand, still gushing come when Jaebeom can fight to open his eyes.

Bambam doesn’t slow his thrusts for a second even as he lets go of his cock, drilling into Jaebeom’s ass mercilessly, chasing his own release. He sinks into the spark and burn of overstimulation and doesn’t realize he’s crying out with every stroke until Bambam hushes him quietly. “Shh, I got you.”

He’s sliding his dirty fingers into Jaebeom’s mouth, swiping across his tongue and underneath, nudging against the webbing. Jaebeom sucks at them drunkenly, sloppily, warm and sated and feeling his spit and his come dripping down his chin and onto his neck as he looks up at Bambam, who groans. “Baby, you’re so messy. You look so pretty all fucked out for me.”

Jaebeom wishes for a second there wasn’t a condom between them, that Bambam could come inside and make him messier, that he could be a sloppier slut than he already is. There must be something of it Bambam can read in his glazed-over look, because he curses and fucks into him faster, jostling and shoving his fingers knuckle-deep into Jaebeom’s mouth, just short of his throat.

With all the effort he can muster, Jaebeom takes Bambam’s wrist in his hand and fucks his fingers in and out of his mouth, swallowing down against his fingertips, almost choking himself in his enthusiasm.

Bambam makes a punched-out noise as he watches, jaw going slack, and shakily stabs his cock into Jaebeom, reacting to every pitiful sound that comes out of him like they’re tearing him up from the inside. He fucks deep, like he wants to imprint himself into Jaebeom’s guts, for the last few thrusts before his face tips into euphoria, painted eyelids sliding shut. Jaebeom thrums, entranced, half convinced he could come again just at the sight.

He gets squashed by Bambam flopping back down on him before he can think about it. “Fucking. _Christ._ ” He slides his fingers out from Jaebeom’s mouth just to pounce on it immediately with a kiss, plunging his tongue inside. “God. Jaebeom….”

He sounds so pleased, so satisfied, and Jaebeom can’t fight the little burst of pride that blooms in his chest. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Bambam breathes, eyes warm and sparkling, “yeah. Yes.”

—

Dawn breaks, and Jaebeom really wants a fucking cigarette.

He's about five milliseconds away from lighting it too, leaning out the living room window when he hears Bambam waddling in.

He flops onto Jaebeom's back ungracefully, but his voice is sleep-heavy and rough at the edges and goes straight to Jaebeom's dick. "Come back to bed."

"Sorry," he sort-of lies. As bad for him as smoking is, he does kind of like the routine. Coffee and a cigarette in the early morning quiet — or at least, as quiet as it gets. “Bad habit.”

But then Bambam is pulling Jaebeom's hair off his nape with a gentle sweep and pressing warm, wet kisses right where his skull meets his neck, nestled behind his ear. "Mmm. Need something else to do with your mouth?" He tightens his hold around Jaebeom's middle, grinding just enough against the angle of his ass from hanging out the window that Jaebeom can feel his morning wood stirring.

"Maybe so," he gasps, and abandons his cigarette on the sill to turn around and drop to his knees.

Bambam gazes down at him, surprised O of his mouth smoothing out into a grin that Jaebeom mirrors before bobbing close and nuzzling against his half-hardness. Something about being home like this, with Bambam as comfortable as could be spending time with him in a space that saw so much of his loneliness — all of it makes him feel strung out, head full of static. So he doesn’t bother waiting to say something to drown out the buzz. “Fuck my face.”

“Shit,” Bambam huffs, voice low and hungry with arousal as he watches Jaebeom take him into his mouth. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Bambam thrusts into his mouth slow and deep right there in the living room with the curtains thrown open, palming his bangs out of the beads of sweat that form on his hairline and cooing how _pretty, pretty, pretty_ his lips are around his cock. He holds the back of Jaebeom’s head ever so gently when he pushes him down to take him all the way to the root, and when Bambam groans _Jesus, baby, you’re so good, taking me so well, Jaebeom,_ his eyes sting with tears from more than just the stifling breathlessness of choking, gagging wetly around the head.

Bambam makes another noise, high and a little surprised, when Jaebeom blinks and lets them fall. “Fuck.” He pulls a little on Jaebeom's hair in warning and comes, thick and hot down his throat.

Jaebeom hears his own squelching, stuffed sobs as he swallows like they’re in another room, tipsy off of the heat in his face and ears, down his neck and in between his legs where his cock is leaking and aching and full from Bambam’s smooth, sweet voice and the salty taste of him on the back of his tongue and the thick shape of him in his mouth. Thinking about nothing, nothing, nothing but Bambam’s fingertips still working against his scalp and the melodic tenor of his words and rutting desperately into his own palm.

“You open up so nice, sweetheart,” Bambam says, rubbing his thumb against the stretched-out crux of Jaebeom’s lips. He slips it in alongside his cock, prying along his teeth, and his cockhead slides against the roof of Jaebeom’s mouth to stick at the entrance of his throat, and Jaebeom’s eyes roll in his head from the sensation of being so utterly, truly full. “So pretty. Come for me.”

Jaebeom does the only thing he can and listens.

Bambam kneels to peel him off the floor as he finishes shaking through the aftershocks, thumbing gently at the tears drying on his cheeks. “Let’s get you back in bed.”

Jaebeom curls into him even on the short, wobbly-kneed journey, feeling strangely exposed and sensitive, like a snail missing its shell. Back in his soft sheets, he stays like that and dozes off in Bambam's arms, only vaguely aware of how unusual it is for him to get like this.

When he wakes up again, his eyelashes clump together a little on opening, and it all comes rushing back. Jaebeom tries not to squirm in embarrassment but Bambam stirs at him pulling away, kissing him, still half-asleep. He smiles, bleary and fond, and presses one more peck against his lips.

“When I'm more awake, I think we should talk.”

That’s all it takes for Jaebeom’s lungs to fill with lead.

He’s only ever heard those words as a bandaid over a wound that he’s been too afraid to acknowledge; things that have rotted and gone sour, grown pestilence. Gashes he only ever made deeper.

The way the band was practically at the end of their rope with him by the time Jinyoung waltzed back into their lives. His need to have someone — anyone — to worship and genuflect and distract from the endless festering inside. When he was eleven with two scraped knees and an attitude problem, and his mother sat him down and told him that his father was leaving, and wouldn’t look him in the eye when he asked if it was his fault.

Jaebeom can’t take another talk. So he doesn’t. He gets out of bed and pulls his jeans on roughly, facing the window so he doesn’t have to see whatever disappointed, pitying look Bambam is giving him. “If you want to leave, just fucking leave.”

“What?” Bambam asks. His voice is groggy and post-coital as he shuffles in Jaebeom’s bedsheets. “I wasn’t — where are you going?”

“I need a cigarette. You know where the door is.”

“What the fuck?”

Heart throbbing and thick in his throat, Jaebeom goes into the other room. His pack and lighter are on the white sill, just where he left them. When he reaches for them, his hand shakes.

There’s a special type of shame in realizing you’re alone — that the things you thought you saw someone else reflecting back to you were just a mirage, a hopeful invention of paradise in the middle of a desert. When they look at you, and the sinking realization hits. The humiliation of loneliness grows. How stupid Jaebeom is to have seen water.

Sharp footsteps follow, thrumming against the old hardwood in harsh, quick timing like the kick of a bass drum. Jaebeom’s stomach turns with the comparison. “So, what, you just want me to leave because I said we should talk?”

Jaebeom attempts to muster up something cold and caustic inside of him, but even as he turns his head to glare at Bambam, he can’t feel anything but a tired, dull, pulsing ache.

He’s standing there between Jaebeom and the couch with only a sheet wrapped around his slim shoulders, arms wrapped together tightly in the front, slim ankles and feet poking out underneath. The frown on his face is nothing like the pout he wore when they were bickering over a pool table; instead, there’s sharp concern in the angle of his eyebrows, in the way they draw together and dig a valley into the smooth tan skin over his nose.

Looking at him makes it so much worse. Words bubble out of him like vomit: “I would rather that than hear you try to let me down gently for being a freak.”

Bambam moves so slowly toward him it’s nearly imperceptible, gaining on him until Jaebeom can feel his warm breath fanning across his bare shoulder. “If you had given me the chance to talk, you would know by now that’s not what I was going to do.”

“I doubt I’m the first one to warn you, but if you want something easy, you’re looking in the wrong direction, kid.”

“And if you’re trying to date someone who isn’t going to be real with you, you got the wrong bitch,” Bambam shoots back, moving stubbornly with Jaebeom’s eyeline as he tries to look away. “Stop. Listen.”

Jaebeom says nothing, jaw clenched so hard he can feel his pulse in his temple. He should have known from the start this was futile. The grease always seeps through.

Bambam doesn’t waver for a second in the face of Jaebeom’s upset. If anything the way he stares back, defiant, is only strengthened, resolve in the tight line of his shoulders that Jaebeom only sees unfurl in the moments he can bring himself to look at him. Bambam looks, and looks, and looks until finally Jaebeom can meet his eye, insides roiling and burning with shame.

He holds out his hand. “Sit with me. Please?”

Jaebeom doesn’t know what else he can possibly do.

(Does that mean the therapy is working?)

He takes Bambam’s hand.

They sit on the couch.

And Jaebeom listens.

“So... that’s what you meant when you said pretty boys only get hurt when they ask for it.”

Bambam doesn’t look embarrassed in the slightest. “Yup.”

Jaebeom tries to tidy up the mess of his thoughts. Most of it is curled up in a knot at the pit of his stomach, or ping-ponging around inside his skull and bouncing everywhere.

Putting words to that deep, longing ache to be owned and fucked and filled feels so blandly revelatory it couldn’t possibly be right. The cruelty he always asked for as an escape from the rote, dull pain of real life being something he wasn’t going to get worried glances over but something that many people do, often enough that there’s a name for it.

“You hurt people for pleasure?” The most boiled down version of what he’d just described. The thing that made something curious and hot boil in his stomach, in his lungs.

Bambam looks down at their tangled fingers, quietly thoughtful. “Not always. But I do like it, a lot. Sometimes, it can feel a little brutal.” He squeezes Jaebeom’s hand. Jaebeom’s heart thumps in his throat. “But I do it safely, the way it should be. That’s why I wanted to talk. And being mean like that... it’s in service to the cause.”

“Of getting off?”

“Not just getting off. I know you’ve felt it before, when you’re getting roughed up during sex,” Bambam says, eyes bolted to him even when Jaebeom’s cheeks burst into splotchy heat. “How being in that position of being taken from made you feel different.”

Mark’s hand around his throat, cutting off the blood to his head. Jinyoung mashing his face into the mattress and pounding hard into him. Biting and scratching and hair pulling and smacking — things that wake him up like a cold bucket of water when used against him in a fist fight, all morphed and convoluted and perverted into something that makes him so… “floaty,” he murmurs. “High.”

“Yes.”

Jaebeom’s mouth is sticky. “And you. You like making people feel like that.”

Bambam’s gaze is dark in the creeping pink light of morning. “I like giving people what they need.”

“You think I need that.” The hair on the back of his neck prickles to attention. There’s something about saying it out loud that makes it too real. There’s no going back from this.

"I don't know," Bambam soothes, leaning into him once more, kissing him soft and slow and gentle enough that the low level buzz in his ears quietens. Jaebeom can’t stop looking at his wet, red lips when he pulls away. “You know yourself better than anyone, and that’s confusing as fuck anyway. But if you wanted to, I think we could work on figuring it out together.”

“We?” Jaebeom repeats. The word thunks and rolls around in his mouth, in his head like a loose marble; the rest of it feels secondary, somehow, behind the immensity of that single syllable.

Bambam senses the unease, squeezing his hand, smiling with his eyes. “Don’t freak out. It’s only our first date, I’m not gonna make you sign a contract or anything.”

It takes a second for Jaebeom to figure out how to say it. Bambam doesn’t rush him. “I’m just. Not used to this.”

Not used to not being all-consumed, not used to being able to slowly fall into someone’s orbit rather than crash land there like an errant comet, exploding shards of ice and earth everywhere. Not used to hearing someone’s words without even trying to listen for the snake hiss of duplicity and falsehood behind it. Not used to laying out his tongue and having words that he means — truthful, living pieces of him — come out instead of venom and metaphor. “Any of it, really. Especially not...talking about it.”

“I like you, Jaebeom.” When he looks into Bambam’s eyes, he sees the bedrock. He sees the unflinching honesty. “I think you’re creative, and fun, and sexy, and gentler than you realize. And I don’t want to rush anything, but I want to see more. How’s that for talking about it?”

“Pretty good,” Jaebeom has to admit, into the warm inches between them. “Pretty fucking good.”

“That’s my line,” Bambam jokes, and kisses him breathless.

“Come with me,” Jaebeom blurts later, as they’re dozing off again, watching Bambam play absently with the callused tips of his fingers on his stomach, head tucked into Jaebeom’s shoulder. He thinks of Bambam at their release party — dressed to the nines and hanging off his arm and murmuring in his ear, sweetly encouraging — and it warms him to the bone. “To the thing.”

“To your album release?”

“Yeah.”

Bambam props his head up with his elbow. His face is stony and serious, and it makes Jaebeom’s stomach tighten with worry for a moment before he speaks. “I know for sure now you know the magic word.”

Jaebeom flushes, barking a laugh. “Please? If you’re not busy.”

“I’ll have to look at my schedule,” Bambam bluffs with a grin, leaning in to lay a long, soft kiss on Jaebeom’s swollen mouth that says everything it needs to.

* * *

“It was really nice,” Jaebeom breathes. He closes his eyes, mouth quirking up at the corners at Michelle’s pleased chuckle.

“I’m glad,” she says, pen scratching against her pad. Jaebeom’s stomach tightens a little, cracking his left eye open, but she’s still just grinning at him like they’re sharing a secret. Maybe they are. “You’ve worked hard; I think you deserve it.”

Feeling surges underneath his collarbones, in the back of his throat, at the base of his skull. It settles over him warm and heavy like a blanket, like Bambam’s smile. “I think so, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work has been among the most challenging for me to finish maybe....ever? For a myriad of reasons (thanks a lot, 2020) but mostly because I feel like the reason I was so attached to Habits Jaebeom after reading Morgan's series is because I see myself in him, or him in me, whichever works. 
> 
> Being someone who has in the past (and still does, to some extent) struggle with anger, I don't often see that sort of emotion explored in fic so intimately. Being angry _feels_ a lot more empowering than being sad, regardless of whether or not that's the truth, and they often come from the same emotional center, the same place. That's why I felt such a draw to writing him after reading Morgan's fic; even when he was being objectively Bad and hurtful and mean I couldn't help empathizing with him. But it can be especially hard to do that with yourself after the fact, and I hope I did well showing Jaebeom working toward that.
> 
> If your past is something you're reckoning with, and you're accepting your past wrongs and working toward making yourself better, know that I am with you, and you deserve to be happy.
> 
> yes Michelle is in fact based off of my therapist; yes the bartender is me and i'm dating Lisa lmfao AND WHAT ABOUT IT
> 
> anyway tl;dr thank you for coming I hope you liked it ♥♥♥♥


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